Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has fired its national data director after he improperly accessed proprietary data from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Officials with the Democratic National Committee said Sanders’ campaign is being cut off from the national party’s voter data until it provides an explanation, as well as assurances that all proprietary Clinton data has been destroyed, The Washington Post reported late Thursday.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont secured two key endorsements on Thursday as he solidified his place as the main challenger to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The staffer, Josh Uretsky, viewed data that the Clinton campaign had added to its own files during a temporary glitch in the voter database managed by outside vendor NGP VAN, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The Vermont senator’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, said a low-level staffer had viewed the Clinton information and had been fired, but he blamed a software vendor for a glitch that allowed access, according to the newspaper. The announcement follows a series of labor union endorsements, representing nearly 12 million people, for front-runner Hillary Clinton. “CWA members endorsed Bernie Sanders because he is the candidate who is talking about real solutions to make our economy fair again,” CWA President Chris Shelton said. “Politics as usual has gotten working people nowhere.

On Thursday the Communications Workers of America announced that a vote of their rank-and-file picked the senator from Vermont as the group’s choice for the Democratic presidential race. Bernie Sanders has collected more than two million political donations for his presidential bid, his campaign announced Thursday, setting a pace that could surpass the contribution count President Obama hit at this point in his 2012 re-election. In all, nearly 1 million individuals have donated to Sanders’ campaign so far, underscoring his ability to tap the same donors repeatedly for multiple contributions. That’s what CWA members are saying, loud and clear.” Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee, endorsed even after founder former Vermont Gov.

The CWA has 700,000 tech and telecommunications members and thus has some real financial and organizational power. “Their endorsement is not just a paper endorsement,” said Sanders at a joint Washington appearance with CWA officials. “We’re going to have thousands of people on the ground knocking doors, making phone calls and helping us.” This boost may be diluted only somewhat by the fact that it is far from a surprise. Sanders and the rest of the presidential field will not have to disclose exactly how much they have raised in the October-December fundraising quarter until Jan. 31 — one day before the Iowa caucuses. Though the Sanders team has fired a top data staffer, Briggs pointed blame at problems with the vendor’s system. “Sadly, the vendor who runs the DNC’s voter file program continues to make serious errors,” he said, noting the campaign had alerted the DNC to problems months ago. CEO Stu Trevelyan of NGP VAN described the event as an “isolated incident,” saying “we have introduced additional safeguards to ensure that this issue will not recur.” Sanders earned Democracy for America’s endorsement after receiving nearly 88 percent of 271,527 votes cast by members nationwide over a nine-day voting period.

Even if some of those endorsements were mainly the work of politically-connected leaders, as opposed to the desire of members, they’ll still produce a lot of action on primary election days. This endorsement – combined with that of CWA, which has 700,000 active members – gives Sanders’ campaign a much needed boost with only 45 days left until the crucial Iowa caucuses. She also commands big leads nationally and in South Carolina, which hosts the first-in-the South primary Feb. 27, according to an average of recent polls by RealClearPolitics. “This is not a race to compile the biggest number of small donors.

That’s because these nods send cross-organization signals about who backs whom, and whom to support, develop into a kind of rough party consensus on nominees. For her part, Clinton has set an aggressive fundraising pace, attending 57 events between Oct. 1 and Wednesday, according to a USA TODAY count of fundraising events described by her campaign. It weights them for importance – a governor’s endorsement is worth more than senator’s, which in turn is worth more than that of a representative. Clinton’s campaign does not disclose how much she raises at each fundraiser, but provides an estimate of the number of attendees and describes the range of donations required for entry.

Former president Bill Clinton was slated to join his wife and performer Sting at a high-dollar fundraiser Thursday in New York to raise money both for her campaign and Democratic Party committees that will help her in a general-election fight. But it’s another chunk of news the Sanders campaign is using to try and convey a new sense of momentum with voting now only a few weeks off and the polls of the Democratic race largely unchanged since October. The former president also appeared at another New York event earlier this month for Priorities USA Action, a super PAC that can raise unlimited funds to support her candidacy. In mid-September, super PAC officials said their contributions and pledges had totaled more than $40 million, but they have not released any new fundraising figures since then. On Thursday, Priorities’ spokesman Justin Barasky said the group is on track to meet “all our fundraising goals” and has reserved cash for the general-election battle to combat the crop of super PACs ready to aid Republicans.

By contrast, the pro-Clinton super PAC has only spent about $220,000 on its TV advertising, federal records show. “Because of the strong position Hillary and her campaign are in, we haven’t had to spend in a major way,” Barasky said.